Get Ready to Vote: #Election2016 Primary

And while the Presidential candidates are at the forefront of the national conversation, there’s a ton of local and state elections that will impact your bottom line and quality of life. Thankfully, the marriage between politics and technology has created some super useful tools to get informed and make your voice heard.

LIVE BALLOT: LiveBallot.com (Twitter) is a new website that “brings the ballot to life”. It’s super easy to use… simply enter your address and a personalized ballot is created. From there, you can click around to explore candidate videos, policy positions and key endorsements. Mark and save your candidates, as well as “endorse” directly to your social media profiles. Pro tip: be sure to sign up for their LiveBallot alerts to receive voter returns/updates throughout Election night.

Live Ballot is launching first in California in 20 counties (including Sacramento!) and will continue to expand in preparation for the General Election. The website is a project of Democracy Live, which is working to revolutionize the voting process by merging expertise in election administration and voting technology.

SIDEWIRE: My former colleague Tucker Bounds is the co-founder of a super handy app called SideWire (Twitter). Sidewire helps voters cut through the considerable pundit noise by curating a community of top-tier journalists, candidates, elected officials, academics, and strategists hosting public chats about the day’s news. You can then keep the conversation going by sharing your favorite analysis (in-app) with your friends.

From the co-founders Bounds and Andy Bromberg: “There is a world of people out there hungry for informed conversation and ready for political discourse they can learn from. Today, technology gives us the chance to serve that world; not drown it out. If we can more effectively connect expert conversation to the day’s most important issues, we can help people make more informed choices. And just maybe the internet will be a little less noisy, and a lot more useful.” (Download here.)